Someone asked me what I thought about the NSA and their spy policies. The woman I was speaking to said she didn't mind the spying because she doesn't break the law (though she torrents movies online). All I could quote was Martin Niemöller's famous quote which he wrote in a Nazi prison camp:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

The NSA "has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world." — The New York Times

The NSA collected "almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks" in one month in 2013. — The Guardian

The NSA is collecting the content and metadata of emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else as part of what it calls "upstream" collection.— The Washington Post

The NSA "is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans." — The Washington Post

The NSA "is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world." — The Washington Post

The NSA "is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country." — The New York Times